


It's The Only Thing To Make Sense

by lionkate



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:14:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionkate/pseuds/lionkate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They can’t really say the don’t know how it happened, but it would be a lie to say they did too. Emm tries to track it back one day, but things get jumbled and then Dorcas’ lips are on her neck and she stops caring.</p>
<p>The truth is- and they can all agree to this- it was probably Mary that started it. It simply made sense. No one would ever doubt that Mary was at the center of whatever it was they were. She was their soft and touchy emotional center even before they became this. The blame, or thanks, fell to Mary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's The Only Thing To Make Sense

They can't really say the don't know how it happened, but it would be a lie to say they did too. Emm tries to track it back one day, but things get jumbled and then Dorcas' lips are on her neck and she stops caring.

The truth is- and they can all agree to this- it was probably Mary that started it. It simply made sense. No one would ever doubt that Mary was at the center of whatever it was they were. She was their soft and touchy emotional center even before they became _this._ The blame, or thanks, fell to Mary.

It might be more surprising to think that, beside Mary, Emm was most responsible for their strange relationship. 

The girls, or at least Mary, Emmeline, Marlene, and Dorcas, had always been more affectionate than was necessarily called for. It began with them.

Mary could proudly boast to being both Emm and Dorcas' first kiss- and for a long time their only kisses. Sometimes they were nothing more than soft, sweet pecks in celebration of something trivial. Sometimes they were long languorous kisses that tasted of firewhiskey and chocolates. Often they were something in between.

It would have been easy to say that alcohol had caused most of it, but it would have also been a lie.

Emm was all too sober for most of them. Dorcas was all too aware. And sometimes, when Marlene had kissed them both, passionate and drunk, they'd look at one another and something would flare up in their eyes. It made perfect sense.

So Emm kissed Marlene and Dorcas when they drank and Mary when Mary kissed her.

One day it suddenly wasn't about celebration anymore. It became how they greeted one another when they were alone and how Emm showed her how proud she was when Mary mastered a spell and the way Mary wished her luck before a match.

It was a good luck kiss that Marlene first walked in on. She didn't bat an eyelash, didn't even pause, just came around wish Emm luck as well. Emm wished Marlene luck even though Gryffindor wasn't playing. And Mary wished them both of them luck for good measure.

After the game they congratulated each other for a match well played or excellent cheering skills. Emm couldn't ever remember later whether her heart was beating the way it was from the game or the way Marley was holding her.

They never discussed it, but that night they congratulated Dorcas too. For being Dorcas.

And it fit. Just like that. The four of them made sense.

Sometimes they would look to Lily, because they loved her too, and wonder. But, it was too soon for Lily.

But, not for Sirius.

He'd already slept with three of them, it was the next logical step. Or Emm thinks so, when she tries to map it out. None of them remembers how he came to be involved though.

They just know that one day he was there, somewhere in between all of them (despite Dorcas' protest to touching him ever again). Emm thinks she can still feel the way his fingers felt in her hair, but it's a feeling she's used to so she can't be sure.

For a week after all she can think of is Sirius' skin.

The girls do a good job of reminding her how soft their skin is.

James and Remus seem to become a part of them together. Dorcas is entirely to thank for Remus, Emm likes to say, but the truth is there's no way Remus would have joined them without James and Sirius.

James joins for Sirius, and she will stand by that until the day she dies. They all know James is madly and stupidly in love with Lily, but not a single one of them could honestly say they didn't think Sirius would convince him. He was his best friend, and now he was a something more. And, like with the girls, it just made sense.

The boys, they relied on each other in ways the girls didn't. They were everything to Remus when they accepted him, they were everything to Sirius when they became his only family, they were everything to James when his parents died. They were eachother's everything always.

Peter was the only one who wouldn't join them. He knew and he almost (but not quite) understood, but he couldn't reasonably handle the feel of all of them. He was a man for one person, he would tell them.

The inclusion of Lily is a group effort unlike the others. It's not just James who  _needs_ her, though he is the most adamant, but all of them. Even Sirius, who would always claim to dislike her, needed her, because James needed her.

It's a slow build, because James has only just convinced Lily to go on a second date with him, but every move is purposeful.

It's all in the way Emm will trail her hand down Lily's arm at the end of their prefect's meeting, in the way Mary presses a kiss just as the corner of her lips when she says goodnight, and how Sirius lets his fingers span the width of her back when he leans over her to talk to James.

All the time James is trying to make Lily feel for him the way he feels for her, he keeps away from them- in case she doesn't understand, in case she feels betrayed.

They ache for him all the while. He's become a part of them and it feels like something is missing deep in their stomachs.

When he finally explains to her that he's part of something bigger, that he loves them, that he loves her, it takes her a week to agree to see them. Her anxiousness is palpable when she joins them in the Room of Requirement the first time.

But they're not fools and they sit in there for hours, drinking and eating and talking. And touching. Because that's something they do now. Even before they realized as much, there was a distinct increase in contact between all of them. Even when they can simply wish for enough seats to suit an army, they sit on two sofas and a mess of pillows.

Emm sits on the end of one, but her legs (long and bare in her green skirt) stretch out over Sirius and Mary's laps where their hands run softly up and down her skin, meeting in the middle like it's a game. One of Marlene's legs tangle with hers over Mary's lap and she keeps a steady hand at the nape of her neck the whole night long.

Lily finds herself between James and Dorcas on the other smaller seat. Remus sits on the floor between her and Dorcas, his arm wrapped around Dorcas' thigh from below. James' hand never leaves hers. She so focused on the feel of his fingers and so fascinated by how the other four look- so connected, so at ease, so happy- that she doesn't immediately notice when Remus' head comes to rest on her knee or Dorcas' hand finds its way between her and James to rest on her waist.

Emm can see the exact moment when she realizes that this isn't the first time they're all touching. She fancies she can even see the moment when she decides that she already loves all of these people, so it only makes sense to love them every way.

Her hand finds its way onto Dorcas' thigh, and that's the end of it.

Emm can map out how Lily joins them best, because it's the only time when it's deliberate, but she finds it's so much more fun to map out their individual relationships, and then putting them aside.

They all love one another as friends and love each other as whatever it is that's more than friends- because she doesn't know of many friends who do what they do, but some of them love harder than others.

Without pause Emm can, and does, tell each of them how she loves them. She whispers it into Lily's neck and laughs it out when James pokes his fingers into her sides, she gasps it out in between hungry kisses from Mary and Marlene and tries to brand it into Remus' skin with her lips.

But, Sirius, she's in love with him. She knows that much. She would marry Sirius, she would give him her whole life. And sometimes she doesn't know exactly how to let him know that he makes her feel like she's on fire. Somehow she thinks he knows anyways.

Sometimes she can feel him on fire too.

Even so it's no secret that she has a special sort of affection for Mary. She's never happier than when she's between the both of them.

She imagines everyone has a special sort of affection for Mary.

James and Lily are, to the world, just James and Lily, not James and Lily and company. They are their own special thing with them as well, but Emm can't begin to count all the time it's been James and Lily and Sirius or James and Lily and Mary or James and Lily and every single one of them. Sometimes it's not even James and Lily. But, they're always  _James and Lily._

Marlene, she thinks, is the most even with them, but there's a slight preference she has among the boys for James. She imagines Mary, James, and Marlene are the most fun together. But, Marlene truly prefers to have everyone touching her. She likes to feel that all of them are there with her, and they love giving that to her.

She enjoys studying Dorcas most of all, she thinks. Angry and abrasive Dorcas who complained about Sirius even as she kissed him and still liked to pretend that she didn't love every one of them so much it hurt. She knows who Dorcas loves most of all, though, it's easy to see.

She can't think of a single time when Remus and Dorcas haven't begun or ended together. It's a need to be together that she understands all too well.

And Mary. Merlin, Mary just loves. Loves each of them so hard sometimes Emm thinks she can actually feel it from across the room.

Even when Marlene falls for Gideon Prewett and they come to the decision (after many long hours of “deliberating”) to include both the twins Mary loves them the fastest and the strongest.

It makes sense that they trace  _them_ back to Mary, but Emm sometimes likes to forget her little mental map and imagine that this was how they've always been. It feels that way more often than not. It's not a question of how they came to be, it's more a question of how in all the world they could not end up as they were now.

And that simply doesn't make sense to any of them.


End file.
